So I took a quick peek into the Men’s Rights subreddit — the leading Men’s Rights forum on the internet, with 156,000 subscribers — to see what the fellas were saying about the disaster in Texas.

I thought, best case scenario, that maybe some of them would have managed to arouse themselves from their torpor long enough to organize some sort of fundraiser. Worst case scenario, they’d be saying some really dumb things.

What I didn’t expect is that no one on the subreddit would be saying anything about it. I did searches to see if any topics from the past 24 hours had mentioned “houston,” “texas,” or “harvey.” I found this one post:

4 points, ZERO comments, after being up on the subreddit for ten hours.

By contrast, here are some of the topics from the past 24 hours that have been getting attention on the Men’s Rights subreddit.

This post, with its 3686 upvotes, was dedicated to making fun of a feminist on Twitter for this:

Even this HUGELY IMPORTANT TOPIC got more attention than the plight of millions in Texas.

Maybe somewhere in some random topic in the subreddit at the moment someone has managed to say a few words about the humanitarian catastrophe in Texas. But in terms of dedicated topics, aside from a single topic that has gotten literally no responses, there really doesn’t seem to be anything there.

UPDATE: A day after this post and another Harvey related topic has gone up!

The question in the title is sarcastic; the post is basically a bunch of pictures of men rescuing women in Houston.

There’s also a bit of movement in the original post — in the form of three whole comments, one of them from the OP. A dude has shown up to complain that teh Red Cross prioritizes women in disaster relief (though this is because in truly desperate situations it increases the chance that resources will go to everyone rather than being hoarded by men).

At the risk of sounding like one of those white guys who go around wearing dashikis and kufi caps, I like the Curaçao statue because it acknowledges it wasn’t just William Wilberforce and kindly white folks.

At the risk of sounding like one of those white guys who go around wearing dashikis

Fam, I see these muffugas around here. In public! No shame tho! One of them has Alex Jones and Ron Paul bumper stickers on his car (he shows up to the store where I work every few days). The fuck? Like, after we tear down the confederate statues, can we topple these assholes? Just lasso em and yank em down? Ugh…

You cool tho 🙂

I like the Curaçao statue because it acknowledges it wasn’t just William Wilberforce and kindly white folks

We can break our own damn chains, thank you very much. You just handle your white homies while we do 😛

Meanwhile, Rex Tillerson sounding like Mayor Quimby or similar Simpsons character satirizing politicians:

“I don’t believe anyone doubts the American people’s values or the commitment of the government or the government’s agencies to advancing those values and defending those values,”

Which values? Why, our values. American values. We hold on to those values because they’re our values, and we in the government will uphold those values because we are the government, and those are our values.

Silence is probably the best possible disaster response from people who consider sexual access to women to be an essential need alongside food, water, and shelter.

If Reddit MRAs tried to organize a relief response, it would probably be a poorly organized and thought out relief effort at best (think unprepared church groups trying to ship old shoes and half-empty Polysporin tubes to “the children of Haiti”), and at worst they might try to send porn or prostitutes for “men’s needs” or hire lawyers to prevent any women-only shelters from being created. As it is, it’s perfectly possible some of them quietly followed the link and donated a few dollars.

While I am not really surprised that Von Clownstick’s pardon was timed during hurricane coverage “for the ratings,” I am a bit taken aback how he brazenly admitted it like it was no big thing. I really hope his remaining supporters pay attention to this, because, damn, if you really needed more evidence that it’s all about his ego, there you go…

A few years back a very naive friend of mine went to a fancy dress party as Stevie Wonder. It’s lucky he was amongst friends, because it was pretty darn offensive. The odd thing is tho, he looked bloody awesome. He wore proper dark skin foundation and a realistic wig, could have fooled me that he was actually black!!! I wouldn’t recommend he did it again tho.

Reading through Ellesar’s link, I’ve got a question. Is it possible for something like a dashiki to be (for lack of a better term) adjusted so that white folks can wear them without being accused of appropriation?

Like, keep the basic design/fabrics of that shirt, but change the decorative geometric patterns/colors from ones that (presumedly) have specific meanings in African cultures, to ones that are just as colorful but otherwise have no cultural meanings. At least to those from the relevant African cultures, anyway.

That way the white guys in that article can have artistic and comfy shirts for dancing in hot weather, and not make those of African descent upset.

Doable? Or is there something obviously wrong with this idea I’m overlooking?

@Redsilkphoenix
Gonna sound meaner than I intend, but shit needs saying, and tryna write it with a nicer tone kinda muddled the thrust of it…

Is it possible for something like a dashiki to be (for lack of a better term) adjusted so that white folks can wear them without being accused of appropriation?

No. You can’t adjust a dashiki for white people. That’s just as bad as, worse than even, wearing the original. It says, ‘hey, we’re stealing this, kthxbye’ but also ‘your thing doesn’t suit us, so we’re gonna change it a bit and pretend like it’s some great innovation’. Like, think of it like an intellectual property sitch. If I take a drawing of yours, change the shape slightly, fiddle with the details some, and call it my own, you’d be right to catch feelings. Bad idea, very bad idea

That way the white guys in that article can have artistic and comfy shirts for dancing in hot weather

Not black people’s job to make white people’s dance parties less sweaty

Apologies for the stepping on feet there with some of my wording. I was trying to avoid giving offense there; clearly I didn’t succeed. 🙁

And it likely shows how much privilege I have, plus never having gone to a renfair before, (no money to spare, for starters), that it didn’t occur to me that dashikis and tunics were variations on each other. Really should have seen that for myself, instead of having it pointed out to me here.

Have to remember to try and think these things through more, next time a question like this occurs to me.

Apologies for the stepping on feet there with some of my wording. I was trying to avoid giving offense there; clearly I didn’t succeed. 🙁

And it likely shows how much privilege I have, plus never having gone to a renfair before, (no money to spare, for starters), that it didn’t occur to me that dashikis and tunics were variations on each other. Really should have seen that for myself, instead of having it pointed out to me here.

Have to remember to try and think these things through more, next time a question like this occurs to me.

The biggest difference between a dashiki and a tunic is manufacture process. Traditionally, dashiki take a longer time to make cos of the way the silk works. Nowadays, mass produced shirts are way quicker and cheaper to make, which is its own problem. Fun (not actually fun) fact, the most common ‘traditional’ print on mass produced dashiki is called the ‘Angelina print’. It was appropriated from an Ethiopian tunic by Dutch traders and made in colonial shops in Indonesia, nowhere near West Africa. But, at this point, it’s become an African American thing, even if not exactly African. So, yeah, regardless *hits too familiar white folk with newspaper* No… no…

We Hunted the Mammoth tracks and mocks the white male rage underlying the rise of Trump and Trumpism. This blog is NOT a safe space; given the subject matter -- misogyny and hate -- there's really no way it could be.